Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

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Propaganda

In addition to the excellent points Lydia made about the flap over philosopher Richard Swinburne's talk at an SCP conference and Michael Rea's “apology” afterwards, our good friend Professor Feser made some pretty significant observations in his comments, here. Some of the most interesting were quotes from gays from the late 1980's, which I am going to reproduce here because they deserve a wider audience. Actually, they should be shouted from the rooftops.

To pretend (as some Christian philosophers I know do) that this sort of thing is essentially just a regrettable but understandable overreaction on the part of wounded souls who have had some bad experiences with obnoxious religious people is naiveté. It is often rather a calculated political tactic aimed at making public dissent from liberal conventional wisdom on sexuality practically difficult or impossible. Some activists admit this. For example, in their 1989 book After the Ball, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen called for a long-term propaganda campaign to change attitudes about homosexuality by shaming, social ostracization, and other tactics deliberately aimed at manipulating emotions rather than appealing to reason. They write:

The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicting twinge of shame… This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, all making use of repeated exposure to pictorial images or verbal statements that are incompatible with his self-image as a well-liked person, one who fits in with the rest of the crowd. Thus, propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths and assholes… who are 'not Christian.' It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned… It can, in short, link homohating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess, and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary…

When [the bigot] sees someone like himself being disapproved of and disliked by ordinary Joes… he will feel just what they feel -- and transfer it to himself. This wrinkle effectively elicits shame and doubt…

Note that the bigot need not actually be made to believe that he is such a heinous creature, that others will now despise him... Rather, our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof… [but] through repeated infralogical emotional conditioning… (pp. 151-53)

[P]ropaganda relies more upon emotional manipulation than upon logic, since its goal is, in fact, to bring about a change in the public’s feelings. (p. 162)

The objective is to make homohating beliefs and actions look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from them… We also intend, by this tactic, to make the very expression of homohatred so discreditable that even Intransigents will eventually be silenced in public… (p. 189)

End quote. In an earlier 1987 Guide magazine article “The Overhauling of Straight America,” these same authors described their strategy this way:

At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights… it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be vilified... [W]e intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.

End quote.

I remember the 70's, the 80's, and the 90's. I remember that gays and various sympathetic liberals in those years were ready to debate homosexual behavior and its morality. I remember that they claimed there were arguments supporting their positions. I didn’t notice it while it was happening, but that stopped, mostly, somewhere in the mid- to late- 90’s. I didn’t notice then, but I did eventually notice by the 2000s that they had shifted tactics to exactly of the sort of thing described in the quote above. And there can be no doubt that they have been immensely successful.

What is the right way to insulate yourself from this tactic? What is the right way to protect your friends and family from it?

Comments (29)

Something similar happened in the discussion of whether homosexuality is compatible with Christianity in mainstream liberal Protestant Churches.

Initially their was an attempt to show that the Bible's condemnation of sodomy and sodomites was not applicable to contemporary homosexuals. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Professor Robert Gagnon, and others offered devastating critiques of the false Biblical case for why the Church should be open to homosexuals. The tactic changed. The pro-homosexual lobby began a campaign to tell their individual stories; and to depict their opponents as intolerant bigots.

What is the right way to insulate yourself from this tactic? What is the right way to protect your friends and family from it?

Sunlight. That is, do the same thing we tell women when being sexually assaulted: fight like hell and make as much noise as possible. Bend every sympathetic ear you can and enlist any allies. In short, brownshirt bullying depends largely on isolating the victim, so avoid it.

I don't know if this is a very good answer to your question as far as insulating or protecting *from the world*. That is to say, if the left-controlled world finds out that you or your family members are so-called "homohaters," then they will probably try to do whatever they can against you. For that fight, the best you can do is find out ahead of time what your legal options are. For example, check into the religious discrimination laws in your state, think about whom you'd retain as a lawyer or even whether a union (possibly?) might come to your aid if you work in a unionized profession. Be prepared to state your position as a true outgrowth of your religious worldview (if it is such an outgrowth), and so forth. If you're in a relatively speech-protected job (such as academe) be aware of free speech organizations like FIRE that might defend you, and know how employment law differs for a private vs. a state school. Be very careful of your on-line privacy. All of that.

But there's another angle to this: We need to have organizations and places where we can openly avow our beliefs, and those need to be protected with vigor. I'm referring here to churches, Christian clubs, home schooling co-ops, Christian colleges, and so forth. In those places, I would say that a really important thing is to rehabilitate language that is now largely considered out of place. Example: If you are a student or professor at an ostensibly conservative, Christian college, start using the word "perversion" when talking about homosexuality. Use it often, and connect it with a phrase like "intrinsically disordered." Also, talk this way amongst your Christian friends in private. Make sure that they don't think they have to avoid such concepts and terminology. Use phrases like "gay rights" and "homosexual agenda" as _negative_ terms, as terms that everyone around you (in those contexts) should _take for granted_ are bad things.

I'm not talking about dirty-mouthed insults here or wishing for people's deaths or anything crazy and wicked like that. But I am talking about straight talk (pun intended). Very direct and unvarnished speech. Christians should never think that they need to "pull their punches" among themselves. And fight tooth and nail against the establishment of any kind of homosexual "support clubs" in those venues and against any language stating, "We do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation." Challenge your pastor and consider finding a new church if he's going on at length about "compassion" for "LGBT brothers" and such talk.

This won't insulate you or your family very well against outside attacks (unless your livelihood is well-protected _by_ such in-house organizations for some reason). But it will maintain centers of operation, beachheads, from which the culture wars can be pursued when and if the opportunity again arises. More important, it will help us and our children keep our _own_ minds clear on these matters.

"To pretend (as some Christian philosophers I know do) that this sort of thing is essentially just a regrettable but understandable overreaction on the part of wounded souls who have had some bad experiences with obnoxious religious people is naiveté. It is often rather a calculated political tactic aimed at making public dissent from liberal conventional wisdom on sexuality practically difficult or impossible."

"I remember the 70's, the 80's, and the 90's. I remember that gays and various sympathetic liberals in those years were ready to debate homosexual behavior and its morality. I remember that they claimed there were arguments supporting their positions."

For most of the country that debate was over by the late 1960s. The context for anything re: gay in the late 1980s is AIDS, popular hysteria, and governmental indifference. This was Act-Up time and the tone of the writing Feser quotes has to be understood in that context.

Based on what I have read around the left side of the innertubes, most had the reaction that I had: A Christian philosopher at a meeting of a Christian philosophical group asserted a commonly held Christian view of the Natural Law. Wow, big suprise! Kukla also needs to apologize (and probably invest in some serious couch time).

As we found out in the recent Marriage cases, no one who isn't already convinced is going to be swayed by these arguments. Even if one grants some credence to the Natural Law as a valid philosophical argument, classifying marriage as an irreducible good as opposed to being a composite of other fundamental goods is debatable.

Jason Stanley is either a fool, a liar, or delusional if he thinks that the dust-up over his nasty comment was anti-semitic. Now, given the nasty people that are out there, I wouldn't be surprised if *since then* he's gotten anti-semitic comments from people unaffiliated with any of the bloggers he cites, which is of course a very bad thing. But I had literally never heard of him before this and had no idea he was Jewish without being told. It is quite clear that neither Rod Dreher nor the authors at Rightly Considered had the remotest motive connected with Stanley's ethnicity in publicizing his comments. This is something he's dragging in quite egregiously. But then, Stanley *is* paranoid, something that Rod Dreher has a certain amount of fun with, here.

As for Stanley's attempt to re-interpret his original comment (yes, in both its versions, which were not much different), the attempt is postmodern in its unconvincingness. He was gleefully, publicly giving the middle finger to all those who disagree with him on the morality of homosexual acts. And saying that even those terms failed to plumb the depths of his feelings against them. To pretend anything otherwise now is on the order of the Big Lie--might as well say something wildly, obviously false and see if you can actually get people to believe it.

Do you left-wingers all hang-out at the same ideological brainwashing convention? I feel like I'm seeing this kind of argument repeated a lot lately in reference to the Swinburne controversy:

"As we found out in the recent Marriage cases, no one who isn't already convinced is going to be swayed by these arguments."

Keep telling yourself that -- which is why, of course, you have to shame and yell epithets at anyone who dares to express the idea that homosexual acts are perverted and/or immoral. As Tony's OP points out (if you were paying attention) there is a reason we are subjected to relentless propaganda on these issues (including the insidious mass media) and why we get a lot of folks who make your statement but never seem to bother with the actual arguments -- they just can't be bothered. I guess it is easier to work on the next generation if you can simply lie to them and convince them that everyone who holds the traditional view on sexual behavior is *hateful* or *bigoted*.

"I feel like I'm seeing this kind of argument repeated a lot lately in reference to the Swinburne controversy:"

If you mean the lack of outrage at a Christian philosopher expressing Christian views and distaste at the demented comments of two overwrought academics, I recall that being the widespread view from the start. Also as Dr. Leiter (himself Jewish) pointed out, the anti-Semitic part of Stanley's apology is unwarranted.

"Keep telling yourself that -- which is why, of course, you have to shame and yell epithets at anyone who dares to express the idea that homosexual acts are perverted and/or immoral."

What "you" and are not "perverted" and "immoral" as well as "sodomy and sodomites" themselves epithets as opposed to actual arguments?

" I guess it is easier to work on the next generation if you can simply lie to them and convince them that everyone who holds the traditional view on sexual behavior is *hateful* or *bigoted*."

I live in the great state of California and remember the two campaigns around same sex marriage issue and both of them revolved around hateful and bigoted tactics on the anti-SSM side. A certain Dr. Allen pointed out in a comment to a post just south of here that, " moreover, sodomy, in addition to being unnatural, cries out to Heaven for vengeance."

That hardly seems like rational, unbigoted sentiment. The reason that folks on your side are referenced as "hateful" and "bigoted" is that besides the notions expressed above (certainly your right) you often use those notions as a lever to seek to deny certain of your fellow citizens the privileges and immunities due them. Cease trying to immanentize your theology and keep it in house and will find that no one will care about your private views.

Cease trying to immanentize your theology and keep it in house and will find that no one will care about your private views.

This blatant attempt gaslighting is not likely to get much traction here.

In response to the question, how do we insulate our families from this tactic? I've been asking myself a related question for some time: how do we insulate ourselves from the demonic tactics of our present age more generally. There once was a time when public opinion was largely shaped through churches. But with modern mass media, that world seems forever lost. Most people watch TV, and it's hard to imagine more than a tiny handful of folks deliberately rejecting the medium entirely. The entertainment (and "edutainment") industry seems by its very elemental structure to represent the attitudes of the more degenerate part of society. And what a massive change: for a society that once was led culturally by the most morally serious element, to so quickly turn about so that it heeds only the most degenerate.

I've heard some argue that we should fight this by encouraging more Christians to go into careers in that industry, but, first, there's real doubt whether any Christians should be encouraged to go into a field that by its very nature tends to be frivolous at best, and even if some can legitimately do so, the sociological forces that cause it to be a magnet for degeneracy are not going away. The only way morally serious people could have a significant impact there would be if moral seriousness were much more widely represented in society at large. But the change in society that I am lamenting is just the fact that these entertainers have become the source of our shared sense of culture; so by default they lead the rest of society, rather than vice versa. I don't see any solution to this, humanly speaking.

We don't have TV, and our kids don't get frequent Internet access till well up in their teens. Then with Net Nanny or similar software. OpenDNS filtering is on the router for all computers in the household. No members of our household have smartphones even yet. It's laptops or desktops, with Internet quite limited for non-adult members of the household. Movies are carefully reviewed first by an adult member of the household before non-adults are either taken to the theater or shown a rented movie (or borrowed from the library), sometimes censored if necessary by the savvy adult who has checked it out ahead.

Our friends in the home schooling community share our values.

The entertainers don't shape your culture if you are willing to create an alternative subculture. And if you don't care what other people think about you for doing so.

Al, this is just wrong. Completely, totally wrong. If you imagine that it is true, you must have inhabited a very, very unusual slice of America. I could point to material that shows it, but I am not going to look up the links now. Suffice it to say that the statistics of people adverse to the gay agenda were, until 1990s, very solidly 85% or upwards, and most of these people didn't think the "debate was over" unless you mean "we have proven that the faggots are wrong".

As we found out in the recent Marriage cases, no one who isn't already convinced is going to be swayed by these arguments. Even if one grants some credence to the Natural Law as a valid philosophical argument, classifying marriage as an irreducible good as opposed to being a composite of other fundamental goods is debatable.

Nobody who is not already given over to left wing nonsense won't be swayed by the gay's arguments, because they have largely stopped making arguments. They have found themselves unable to seriously deal with the position of traditional morality, and stopped trying. Your characterization of the Natural Law position is just silly.

What "you" and are not "perverted" and "immoral" as well as "sodomy and sodomites" themselves epithets as opposed to actual arguments?

Hahahaha, that's funny, Al. This post is about a propagandistic ploy to abuse language so as to short-circuit debate and induce internal shame WITHOUT ANY JUSTIFIED SUBSTANCE to cause the feeling, and you come back with this. Have you no shame? Jeff wasn't making an argument, he wasn't trying to make an argument, he was describing something. And calling the defining act of gays "sodomy" is not in the least bit an epithet, it is simply the proper term in English for a specific kind of act. State laws use the word frequently, because it is a clearly determinate word that pertains to a distinct act. If you don't like the word, then don't like the behavior either.

I live in the great state of California and remember the two campaigns around same sex marriage issue and both of them revolved around hateful and bigoted tactics on the anti-SSM side. A certain Dr. Allen pointed out in a comment to a post just south of here that, " moreover, sodomy, in addition to being unnatural, cries out to Heaven for vengeance."

Allen was just reminding us what the Bible says. Which, I feel confident, you knew perfectly well. So what you are really doing with this comment, is to try to use the same damn tactic Feser highlighted and that I posted above. Well, take a flying leap with that! Bullsh#! The behavior IS perverse, the inclination is perverse, the fully willed act does cry out to God for vengeance. Calling it bigotry is simply refusing to engage the principles and foundations behind these claims.

We don't have TV, and our kids don't get frequent Internet access till well up in their teens. Then with Net Nanny or similar software. OpenDNS filtering is on the router for all computers in the household. No members of our household have smartphones even yet. It's laptops or desktops, with Internet quite limited for non-adult members of the household. Movies are carefully reviewed first by an adult member of the household before non-adults are either taken to the theater or shown a rented movie (or borrowed from the library), sometimes censored if necessary by the savvy adult who has checked it out ahead.

Lydia, this pretty much mirrors what we have done, also.

I would mention a few additional steps, however. If you completely insulate them from exposure to the culture until, say, age 18, and then they meet the culture head on in jobs, at college, or otherwise, they will be largely defenseless against the above tactics. Remember, the tactic doesn't depend on reason, it slides right under it. You can be raised perfectly well, and have your morals and sensibilities screwed on entirely correctly, and still fall prey to the methods because you don't realize what is being done to you.

I believe that in their teen years, the children need to be gradually exposed to SOME elements of this, and given the tools first to recognize the nonsense, and then to resist it. They need to be helped in learning to notice when the tactic is being used. They need to practice methods of resistance.

In addition, as parents our job is not done when we have gotten them through high school. Choosing a college is at least as important. It used to be the case that Catholic parishes would teach parents that they had a moral obligation to give their children a Catholic school education. It didn't stop being a serious moral obligation, just because the fool pastors stopped telling parents this. Well, in this day and age, it is just as important to treat college the same way. More than half of Christian kids lose their religion at college. Our colleges and universities are breeding grounds not just of immoral behavior, but of wrong-headed thinking in virtually every department on campus.

But these are general thoughts. They aren't specific enough: when you are a well-raised young adult at a job and have some co-worker (or worse, a boss) act as under an absolutely shared assumption and conviction that "X is bigoted", and speak as if it were an already acknowledged fact that calling sodomy immoral is "homophobia", how are you to counter this? Even when you DO see the boss's behavior as a problem, you still need to ACT in such a way that his influence and moral weight does not get under your skin and get you doubting, second guessing, wondering, or feeling even a twinge of shame. It isn't as easy as just SAYING "they are wrong".

Shaming back at the person employing the tactic might be a useful tool - sometimes. Probably not very often, frankly. Should we use it anyway, for its "collateral benefit"?

I agree concerning teen years. Heck, our dinner table conversation, especially with a young adult in the house, is guaranteed to expose the younger siblings to a huge amount of what is going on in the culture and to cultural norms that are different from our own. In fact, that's something we've had to decide how to negotiate--what do we talk about and not talk about, at what ages, with older children, in front of younger siblings? I imagine the larger one's family the more interesting that whole decision-making process becomes.

It used to be the case that Catholic parishes would teach parents that they had a moral obligation to give their children a Catholic school education.

Not to be snarky, but given how relatively secularized and/or confusing and wussy too many "Catholic" K-12 schools are now, I tend to think more traditional Catholics may counter that they now have a moral obligation *not* to give their children a "Catholic" school education.

Well, in this day and age, it is just as important to treat college the same way.

And it's been that way for decades, too, but perhaps more urgently now. I would never in a million years suggest simply dropping off a Christian young person to live at a residential secular college (or even many "Christian" colleges) and saying, "Hey, you're an adult now. Go for it." For more reasons than I can name. Nor is this entirely a matter of "sheltering." Frankly, I as an adult would consider it a nightmare to live in many secular college dormitory situations, and would have as a young person as well, so why beggar oneself or put one's kid in debt for life for that unpleasant "experience"?

One option is attending a nearby college, whether Christian or secular, and living at home. Lots of money saved and lots of opportunity for conversation about things that come up.

when you are a well-raised young adult at a job and have some co-worker (or worse, a boss) act as under an absolutely shared assumption and conviction that "X is bigoted", and speak as if it were an already acknowledged fact that calling sodomy immoral is "homophobia", how are you to counter this? Even when you DO see the boss's behavior as a problem, you still need to ACT in such a way that his influence and moral weight does not get under your skin and get you doubting, second guessing, wondering, or feeling even a twinge of shame. It isn't as easy as just SAYING "they are wrong".

That's true. We pick up social attitudes osmotically. If you have to hide your so-called "homophobia" to keep your job, it's very difficult to avoid starting to _feel_ ashamed of it. Some people are naturally more immune to this sort of unspoken influence than others. This is where a lifelong mental habit of not going with the crowd can be useful. Being prepared to be a "stranger in a strange land." Stories from childhood up about one lone person against the many. Athanasius contra mundum. Abdiel in Milton--among the faithless, faithful only he. Etc. Also, the more open and frank the speech among those of one's own persuasion after one is an adult, the more that will counteract this sort of shaming at work.

Not to be snarky, but given how relatively secularized and/or confusing and wussy too many "Catholic" K-12 schools are now, I tend to think more traditional Catholics may counter that they now have a moral obligation *not* to give their children a "Catholic" school education.

Awfully glad you decided not to be snarky, my dear gal. :-) I dare say you are right, in actuality. My parents (back in the 60s) told my older sister that she was allowed to flunk religion class as a senior in high school - that she could bring a pillow to class and sleep. She didn't take them up on it, but it is an indication of what you are saying. It's part of why I homeschool, given that there is a parish school near enough if I wanted to use it.

Regarding the stuff at work, the hidden assumptions and veiled threat stuff: would it be effective to respond to this stuff by saying something (to the right person) along the lines of "this intolerant behavior makes me uncomfortable, and if it persists I will have to take steps." When you are pressed on "what behavior was intolerant" you carefully enunciate the fact that the speech with unspoken assumption that everyone must share the dominant perspective, and the half-veiled threat of punishments for people who don't go along with the dominant perspective (this is an important phrase), without claiming PERSONALLY to be one of those who does not hold the dominant view. The angle you present is something like "it makes me uncomfortable that your intolerant behavior would be threatening to someone who doesn't hold your views, and I won't let someone who is too afraid to speak on their own behalf to go without a voice to defend them." If pushed, you hint that someone HAS ALREADY mentioned to you being uncomfortable by that intolerant speech. (You can talk to yourself, can't you? You can tell yourself you are uncomfortable, right?)

There are sometimes cases like that, but it helps a lot if the organization is already aware of the legal issues and also if the legal precedents are clear. For example, _public_ universities cannot force people to engage in "coerced political speech." Now, let's suppose that you teach at a public university, and you know that the university counsel is aware of this limitation on the university's coercive powers. In that case, if your department enacts a "pronoun use" policy, you could question the chairman by saying, "I believe that this policy conflicts with the precedent-established requirement that universities cannot impose coerced political speech." Sometimes a lot of this depends on bluff: "We have a policy about this," and if no one actually asks, "Can you _really_ punish or fire someone if he doesn't comply?" they never have to answer the question. So challenging that bluff as a matter of "clarifying" or "expressing concern" can certainly be useful.

But it's risky, of course. Depends on how touchy your superior is.

Probably a person would be in a better position if he were already a division supervisor, dean, or something of that kind: "I'm concerned that if I force people in my division to comply with this I could be engaging in coerced political speech. Isn't that legally problematic? I wouldn't want to precipitate a lawsuit."

It's harder in a private company where there are not such clearly established precedents. I think you would have to use explicit, legally tagged terminology like, "Couldn't this amount to a hostile work environment for people with such-and-such a religious view, and hence violate regulations against religious discrimination?"

As to how far you'd get with it and whether you'd lose your job (*of course* without the admission that that was *why* you were fired), that would depend entirely on the individual people involved. That's always the case.

And, in any case, taking a stand to repudiate the PC intolerance is usually only going to take place after you have managed to put a halt to the unreasonable feeling of shame at being the target of social "disgrace". THAT's the first, difficult thing we have to learn to accomplish, and teach others to do. Probably, it will do well to keep always in mind that Jesus warned us about all this - persecution and all. But knowing that you have reality on your side and you are doing what Christ wants is not the same as feeling untouched by the social pressure.

What is the right way to insulate yourself from this tactic? What is the right way to protect your friends and family from it?

I'm fairly convinced that the complete answer is much more involved than I can articulate, but I want to say a couple related things about this. First, in my own experience it was liberating a few years back to discover the source of the propaganda; about like discovering the Wizard behind the curtain. As a result, it's easier to see most people who use terms like "bigot" and "homophobe" as brainwashed (or at least highly manipulated) victims rather than as people who've put much thought into what they're saying, and why. Second, it helps to keep in mind that, at bottom, angry people are angry because they are afraid. They've not repented and accepted God's forgiveness through Christ, and so they remain under God's judgment. For that reason, they also remain stuck in their own desperate efforts to hide their sin. Third, it helps to be well aware of the testimonies of same-sex attracted people who are actively resisting their desires and, apparently, having some success at it. I mentioned this over at rightly considered, but the "Such Were Some of You" documentary, along with works by Christopher Yuan, Doug Mainwaring, and Roberto Oscar Lopez, can be helpful here, both for ourselves and our loved ones.

On a similar note, I think that same-sex attracted and "trans" people who want to change (and, of course, we their allies) should start organizing and pressuring the American Psychological Association to actively search for effective ways to help people cope with, if not conquer, same-sex attraction and gender confusion. Since we live in a culture that encourages people to "come out," and since so many organizations are willing to bend over backwards to accommodate LGBT demands, let's use that leverage to get people the help they want and need.

Finally, those of us who are believers need to *memorize* and *remind* ourselves daily of the many New Testament passages on suffering, persecution, and the like, such as Matthew 5:10, Luke 21:17, John 15:18, John 16:2, John 16:33, Romans 5:3-5, 2 Timothy 3:2, James 1:2-4, 1 Peter 1:6-7, 1 Peter 2:20-23, and so on, thereby girding our loins with the belt of truth (cf. Ephesians 6:10-18).

The whole societal re-programming reminds me of cult-like strategies of influence. I suggest that studying those tactics as well as counter-programming techniques might be helpful. It is not enough to classify the rhetoric as simply reason short-circuiting. One has to understand how it is done, to practice defenses against it, like any martial arts, and to prepare offensive strategies. In short, we need to become language and logic ninjas.

One thing that semantics has shown is that the best way to stop a protest is to cut off the microphone. This tactic was used, successfully, to stop protests at Berkley, back in the day. That seems to be the homeschool method-of-choice. As Tony points out, however, carried to extremes, it does not prepare children for the onslaught of techniques that will be used against them in the workaday world.

So, if you want to talk about insulation techniques, look at how Spooks are trained to resist re-programming by the enemy, when captured. There are several tactics that could be applied, here.

1. Do not form an emotional attachment to the enemy.
2. Keep in mind one true thing.
3. Accept nothing from the enemy.
4. Know your own weaknesses - these are the paths that will be exploited.
5. Do not become isolated - there is a reason the early Church sent out evangelists in pairs.
6. Speak as unemotionally as possible -Spock-like. Once emotions become activated, the enemy has an in.
7. Learn all of the fallacies of logic, how to recognize them and counter them.
8. Expect to die. Look for an escape at every instant.
9. The past is more important than the future, when captured. Truth is not context-sensitive, only facts are. What was truth in the past remains true.
10. Repeating an opinion, often, doesn't make it true. Watch out for memory distortion tricks.
11. The enemy will try to establish a connection through mimicry, non-verbally. Do something odd and see if the behavior is mimicked. If it is, trust nothing. This technique is used in restaurants to sell you things.
12. Look at the psychological literature for conformity studies, such as the Asch conformity study.
13. Rituals help counter programming. Daily Bible study or prayer can keep one in continuity.
14. We know a lot about the neuroscience of habit formation and triggers. Study the circuitry and stop it.
15. Have hope. The moment you lose hope, you've lost.
16. Keep asking the enemy, "Why?" He will give you all sorts of reasons. This gives you an in to counter-argue. When he responds, say, "What?" This will make his argument seem weak. He will restate. Keep responding as if he is speaking gibberish. He will, eventually either kill you or give up trying to convince you.
17. Groupthink can be diffused with only one or two devil's advocates. Imagine one standing by your side.
18. Thankfully, the enemy cannot harshly torture you, for now, only softly torture you. There is no universal way to resist harsh torture. Everybody breaks, eventually. Soft torture is more like dirty fighting. Know your enemy.

I would also love to see some nitty-gritty specifics, such as on the Asch conformity stuff. And effective counters to it. I strongly suspect that the Delphi techniques are also being used, they usually are when groupthink and PC are involved.

As you suggest, accept nothing from the enemy. NEVER accept their premises. However, I would like to know whether it is more effective to DISPUTE them, or throw them back in their faces, or question them over and over (with or without the idea of treating them like they are gibberish.) Or something else. Maybe just start laughing at the silly assumptions?

Or try to turn the tables on them and use shaming techniques on them in spite of the fact that they don't share our principles? I feel like this should be explored, but I for one have ready capacity to make this one work. I just don't think along those lines.

One of the things that the gay movement, and their liberal fellow-travellers, have done alongside the shaming techniques is a studied and wholesale effort to make gay social customs be "normalized" in the culture. In the 1960's and 70's, no straight male would wear earrings. Somehow, they broke that taboo and got some straight men to do so - probably by selling it as rebellious. Same thing with other stuff, such as styles of clothing. It's been a long time since I shopped for a suit, but this summer I discovered that one of the common "fit" options is "modern fit", which is pretty much spot on the same as the preferred stylistic standard of gay men of the 80's. Even the name (or one of them) for this stylistic morph during the 90s is explicitly sexuality-based: "metrosexual". I think it was a consciously pushed agenda of breaking down barriers against the homosexual mind-set. Even pro football has succumbed: in watching the game last night, I was sickened to see that most of the players were wearing pink shoes, or wrist-bands, or towels. I couldn't stand it, and turned it off. Kudos to the few who weren't wearing the junk. (As an aside, I have to wonder at a league that forbids players making a statement with their uniform, and then enacting "official" statements in favor of this or that preferred club, group, or movement. Don't they see their own hypocrisy at all?) Hey, all you real men out there: when is the last time you laughed at or mocked a guy for wearing fag clothing? Do your part here - push back at the insidious trend-setters! Maybe treat a guy wearing earrings as if he had explicitly said "I'm gay"? Like asking point blank "when did you come out of the closet as a gay man?" Come to think of it, this sort of push back would be far more effective coming from women: No straight young man can long stand it if even 2 or 3 of his female acquaintances suggest to him that his clothing is sending them "he's gay" signals. He'll change in a hurry, guaranteed.

"Legutko says it’s the same way under contemporary liberal-democracy on the subject of homosexuality. If you’re smart, he says, and you have anything critical to say about homosexuality or the gay rights movement, you had better begin by condemning homophobia and praising the gay rights movement, and you had better serve up your criticism wrapped in “the rhetoric of tolerance, human rights,” etc."

I don't like this answer, but I find it interesting at least. I am not sure we are yet at the point where in order to protect families, friends, and ourselves we should employ this strategy. I am, at the moment, more drawn to wanting to mock and shame liberal/progressive/lgbt ideas. The about face on the gender identity stuff such that they now say a "transwoman really is a woman" pretty well pushed me over. My mother is a woman, my wife is a woman, this idea of theirs is outright insulting and offensive. If that does not merit shame and ridicule, what does? If we cannot shame people who insult our wives and mothers, who can we shame? I am not suggesting this needs to be over the top, their ideas are so bad that just explaining why should shame them pretty good.

Maybe when after we have fought the fight to the bitter end for all the rights we have enjoyed, such as free speech and religious exercise (as Lydia suggested), and lost those, then Legutko's strategy might be wise.

I don't like this answer, but I find it interesting at least. I am not sure we are yet at the point where in order to protect families, friends, and ourselves we should employ this strategy. I am, at the moment, more drawn to wanting to mock and shame liberal/progressive/lgbt ideas.

DR84, I think that at this stage, BOTH might be right. That is, when you are in the workplace, or in a public venue with some "authority" like a college, you have to use the approach of wrapping the criticism in the rhetoric of tolerance and human rights. But among friends, at a bar, at a party, in the grocery store, at a ball game, it's a different story: use the mockery and shame. Make them feel the censure that they should feel.

you have to use the approach of wrapping the criticism in the rhetoric of tolerance and human rights.

But if you don't believe in the homosexual agenda (which ex hypothesi the people we're trying to advise do not), you should _never_ "begin by condemning homophobia and praising the gay rights movement." That just perpetuates the culture of shaming conservatives. And I'm totally against the gay rights movement. Absolutely and completely. To say anything else would be deceptive, and more--it would be counterproductive of what I want to do. Which is to discourage rather than encourage this kind of ground-ceding.

My understanding of what "condemning homophobia and praising gay rights" means is something like saying it is better that it is not socially acceptable to legitimately bully or dehumanize people because of their sexual perversions. Granted, I am young enough that I do not know of a time when that was ok, so I just have to take people at their word that this was once broadly socially acceptable. I did not take it to literally mean that we should start condemning what they say is homophobic and praise same sex "marriage".

I also have to say I very much like the idea of calling same sex activity a perversion. This something in online discussions I have avoided just to avoid giving people more reason to make themselves offended.

My understanding of what "condemning homophobia and praising gay rights" means is something like saying it is better that it is not socially acceptable to legitimately bully or dehumanize people because of their sexual perversions.

No way. That is *absolutely not* what those words would mean. "Homophobia" as used in such a context means (that is, by definition includes) "considering homosexual acts wrong and unnatural." "Gay rights" is *completely* wrong. From the beginning, by definition, "gay rights" was a political movement for the sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws that are causing all this persecution, and indeed were causing persecution even *before* homosexual "marriage." Gay rights was, is, and always has been about giving homosexuals (and now "transgenders") legal _rights_ as a "protected class" based upon their "gayness."

I have to come out and say, too, that there are various kinds of "discrimination" that are seen as "bullying" but are completely legitimate. For example, if a property owner won't rent to an openly gay couple and even allows an expression of disgust to cross his face while telling them that he will not rent the apartment to them, that would _definitely_ be considered "bullying." If an employer, for a whole variety of reasons, prefers not to entangle his company by employing an openly gay employee, that isn't bullying objectively but would certainly be considered so. Overall, it would be healthier for society if, because of purely social pressure, homosexuals found it better to "stay in the closet." That's a shocking statement to many, but we really don't need to be told all about this perversion that our fellow citizens have and/or suffer from. Nor are the vast majority of homosexuals today anguished people struggling with their perverse urges and wanting to get rid of them. If our society as a whole were more openly disapproving (sometimes thought of as "bullying") maybe more of them would be, and that would be better for them as well as for everyone else.

As Lydia, I would reject using that expression and reject what gays mean by the term - everything about it. I would, however, consider using speech that in fact defends the REAL rights of those who are gay, as a wedge in the door to be taken seriously: for example, I would use defending gays against unjust violent attacks (not verbal but physical attacks) to set the stage for attacking various irrational parts of the gay agenda. This is not "gay rights", after all, it is a human right to be free from unjust attacks.

"Condemning homophobia"

Again, as Lydia implies, you cannot even use the term "homophobia" any more without being misunderstood as supporting the gay meaning for the term, which includes even thinking that sodomy is immoral. So any time you were to use an expression like "I condemn homophobia" you put yourself in their camp about what "homophobia" includes.

Normal people have been induced to have a phobia about "being a homophobe". It's completely irrational, but then that's what phobias are. People ought to be revolted by sodomy, and ought to be disgusted by people who choose it as a lifestyle, and ought to be unwilling to interact with them freely and as a friend in all walks of living. You shouldn't WANT to be a true friend to someone who has embraced the gay life, the gay mentality, the gay agenda: true friendship requires a meeting of the minds, and the true friend is "another self". It would only be insofar as someone was at least willing to work on the issue of whether their SSA is bad for them, at least consider changing, at least discuss the problem honestly, that you could even begin to harbor something that approached real friendship with them, and it could only progress into full friendship to the extent they continued down a pathway in which they at least changed their minds, if not fully and completely reversed their behavior. The friendship would be conditional at best while they remain gay in attitude.

You wouldn't say of a kleptomaniac who embraced his kleptomania as a lifestyle, as "the way he was meant to live", that you would be willing to ignore his mania in order to be his friend. That's not real friendship. The only way you could live around someone like that and simply ignore the disorder of his klepto life as if it were a mere stylistic preference would be to deny your own principles. Same thing goes for a cocaine addict, or any other inherently destructive type of behavior. It's not a phobia to be disgusted at homosexuality as a lifestyle.

On the other hand, every sodomite, and every kleptomaniac and every drug addict, remain human beings capable of being loved. It is therefore possible to speak - carefully - in positive terms of human love about a gay person, i.e. without actively condemning them as a person, but also without demeaning your own beliefs and standards. Mother Teresa did that, while living a life that invited them to turn away from evil. It is possible to refrain from saying everything that you think about sodomy while speaking the truth.

But for the most part, since actual gays are only about 2 % of the population, our main efforts should be in bolstering the right thinking and attitude in others, to make sure THEY don't go farther down the rabbit hole of phobia about homophobia, and indeed come back up top into the light.

If our society as a whole were more openly disapproving (sometimes thought of as "bullying") maybe more of them would be, and that would be better for them as well as for everyone else.

This is the sort of thing I would like to see. And discuss here. How, precisely, does one carry out the "disapproving" while not being actually uncharitable? And what sorts of things are going to be effective, successful? Should we go back to calling gays by other words? Should we refuse to speak to the neighbor across the street who is living as a gay "partner". Should we clam up and walk away from the discussion at the water cooler when a gay person walks up? Should we go further, and make disparaging comments about their lifestyle to them (not at work, unless you want to be fired)?

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